Authism - giving and receiving feedback/critiques for creative writing

Today I want to talk about the whole business of feedback and critique for your writing (or any creative work). 

It helps to know how it feels if you have experience of giving and receiving it. In my twenties and thirties there weren’t a load of people I knew who wrote (except my mother who inspired me to start writing books) but once I was a published author in my late twenties, friends, family or friends of the the family would sometimes send their stuff to me and usually asked for honest criticism for their chapters or plays etc. Seeing as they asked I’d give. But I was always gentle. It was far easier to point out typos, clunky sentences or ambiguous paragraphs which needed clarification. Most didn’t want more dramatic structural changes and it’s just as well because even if I did feel confident enough I doubt that I’d have spotted them. No, I was better at dealing with the individual trees than the whole wood. This I’m now thinking is an audhd thing. Focussing on specifics but not so good at analysing the whole. I can’t say this applies every time but as I take a long time to read a book (which I’ve covered in previous blogs) then it's easy to lose sight of the whole or when a story might be losing its way.

As I didn’t know many writers in the early stages of honing my craft the main feedback I’d get was from publishers and agents. I’d prefer it this way too as with people close to you it was like baring your soul. Problem with publishers though is they’re a busy lot. If you got any feedback at all you were lucky. You learned to relish positive or constructive rejections rather than the dreaded standard letter. 

As a recipient I know that a few constructive suggestions are worth their weight in gold. My idea of a good critique or a review is someone who picks out the positives or strengths and balances these with any weaknesses. It’s important to know where you might improve, otherwise how are you ever going to progress? But, as we all know, anybody in the creative business is über sensitive - that’s what makes us creative in the first place, right? And as autistics we know only too well what Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria can do to us. We don’t know it means to develop a thick skin and even if someone balances strengths and weaknesses we will home in on the weaknesses, won’t we?  I know I do!

Besides, while there is such a thing as objective criticism there’s a whole load that is completely subjective. I used to try and show I was receptive to suggestions for improvement by taking on board everything, only to find that when I’d incorporated those suggestions my book was still rejected.

So I evolved a general rule of thumb which was this: if only one person made a criticism about some aspect of my book then I took it with a pinch of salt (depending on whether I agreed with it or not and who was giving it of course). But if two or more people independently came to the same conclusion or offered the same criticism then there was probably something in it.

As for giving criticism, I prefer to do critiques or even better - feedback - which is a much broader concept. As autistic people it may be very difficult striking a balance between annoying pernickety things (like the exact year or even month when that record was in the charts!) and being sensitive. The other side of the autistic coin is we are often people pleasers and don’t want to upset people - we know what it is to feel the aforementioned dreaded RSD mentioned earlier.

Another rule of thumb I have is that if someone posts a work of art, say, or a poem or photograph on social media I will never offer a critique unless it’s asked for. And people will freely ask for it if they want it. They will say - do you prefer painting A or B? Do you prefer the font on book cover A or B? Can you suggest how I might improve this piece of writing, synopsis, pitch etc? That is absolutely fair game and what specialist FB groups are set up for. But a person’s personal Facebook page etc isn’t the place for art criticism however well-intentioned unless it's asked for. If you don't like it, just scroll on past. Some people do their creativity arts as therapy.

Do let me know your own feelings below and how you approach giving or receiving feedback for your creative endeavours.

Many thanks 😊